


thursday night

by PikaCheeka



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Sex, Drugs, Gore, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Prostitution, Violence, Yakuza, a lot of criminal behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 12:30:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8327932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PikaCheeka/pseuds/PikaCheeka
Summary: Thirteen vignettes spanning thirteen years of Virus' life as he climbs the ranks of the Yakuza, commits every crime under the sun, and gradually comes to an understanding about his relationship with Trip.A ViTri fic told from the perspective of Virus’ nameless mentor/sponsor within the criminal family.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic about Virus, his painfully slow awareness of his interest in Trip and his rise in the Yakuza over the course of thirteen years. It is told from the perspective of his nameless/faceless mentor, or sponsor within the criminal family. I wanted to play with the development of the ViTri relationship as seen by an outsider, someone who can’t fathom the oddities of their relationship, but someone who is interested in them as people and similarly depraved. Due to the lack of Yakuza world-building and extra characters in the game, I had to create this mentor figure (with the help of my friends King & Catfeet!!)
> 
> Dedicated to King, who has contributed much to both the creation of Mentor-san and to this fic.

****

** YEAR EIGHTEEN **

He came to me on a Thursday night, not even classy enough to wait until the weekend before he began making the rounds of the upper echelon. He already had a reputation then, less than three weeks on in the ranks of the Midorijima Yakuza and before he even had an official initiation yet, a special case shoved upon us by a company we couldn't seem to blackmail enough. An eerily attractive maniac with no inhibitions whatsoever, equal parts brutal and sluttish, a peculiar combination rarely found outside of this sort of organized crime. Eighteen years old and far too knowledgeable in the ways of murder and sex and illicit drugs. It wasn't difficult to see where he was headed if he didn't shape up, regardless of how reputable his day job was and how much money his respectable employer had. 

What surprised me most after his height was his soft-spokenness, juxtaposed sharply with the seething cruelty in his smile. But I mentioned none of that.

"You actually blonde?"

"Yes."

"Aren't contacts and glasses overkill?"

"They aren't contacts."

He said all of it with that dead-eyed smile on his face, but it was somehow enough, and I found myself moving aside, inviting him in. He stepped in as if he owned the place, as if I were the one selling my ass on the cheap to gain favor and he were the one accommodating me. But it didn't bother me as much as maybe it should have, and from that moment on Virus did nothing but push the boundaries more and more, sliding in and out of my life with an ease and a familiarity that indicated an unearthly sense of self-awareness. I knew right away that night something was wrong with him, something broken or shaken loose, or just never put together in the right order to begin with. But I let him in anyway, pushed him down onto my bed and fucked him hard and paid him more than he'd asked for, a roll of bills tucked into the pocket of the shirt he hadn't even taken off, made an appointment for next week, same time, and a more formal arrangement in three days to discuss his position. I remember asking against my better judgment if he had anyone to watch out for him yet, anyone to take him under his wing, sponsor him. _Of course not, I wouldn't do that without checking with you_ , was all he'd said, as if I were the one in power. But I wasn't, neither in the Yakuza or in the situation. I was the front, important through marriage and not blood, and therefore more accessible to someone like him, and he damn well knew that but still purred and bowed and shyly grinned as if he were too stupid and obedient to know the difference, as if he'd chosen me purely by coincidence.

It wasn't until the seventh time I had him in bed when he mentioned him. He knew someone who might want in on the game in a few years, and what might he do about it?

"That's a big favor to ask," was all I'd said, rolling a post-coital smoke between my fingers as I stared down at him, half-dressed and stretched across the couch. He hadn't done anything with his hair that day, and I'd been surprised to see how thick and soft it was. He was pretty, I'd give him that much, and he had a good body that he knew how to use.

"He's a kid now. We have time to work it out." He said it so calmly that I almost didn't realize how he slid into the assumption that I would help him. Asshole.

"Is he a mixed bitch like you? Not a lot of room in the Yakuza for that." The whispers and raised eyebrows over letting a blonde kid in, and Virus isn't much more than that for all of his bluff, regardless of how good he was in bed and what he was willing to do for a little acceptance in the group.

"He's all white I think. Redhead, actually." He paused and examined his nails at this point. "He bites, too. Kind of rude."

"That's rich." I had no clue where he was going with this. Virus never talked about people with any sort of affection, instead like they were insects pinned to a board, a tired and clinical bemusement. This was different though. This was someone who he was at least mildly intrigued by. "How do you know he'd want in?"

"Because I'm in. He follows me."

"Sounds like a pain in the ass."

"No." He replied so quickly I had scarcely finished the words.

"What's his name?"

"Trip."

I opened my mouth to call him on his bullshit, to ask if he was trailer trash from the States or something, with a name like that, but the look on his face stopped me. The cigarette he'd grabbed from me only moments ago now lay forgotten between his fingers, as he stared off into nothing, an inexplicable and equally undeniable longing frozen in his eyes.

I wasn't touching that. No way was I ready to touch that.

****

** YEAR NINETEEN **

"Trip might not like how I'm a slut."

"Oh?" I don't point out that he shouldn't worry about that kind of thing if he doesn't care about Trip, as he claims. I've heard precious little about what this individual is actually like in the last eight months, but at the same time, it's been enough. Enough to be over half of what comes out of Virus' mouth that isn't directly related to work when he shows up with extreme regularity every Thursday night. Food or sex or Trip. It's all he chatters on about. But he doesn't care about him, he says, not at all.

He tilts the glass slowly and watches the last few drops of vodka splatter onto the floor. "And I'm like this." He gestures lazily towards his crotch. He could mean anything, the way he sits spreadeagled on my bed, naked below the waist, but I know he's talking about the needle tracks on his inner thigh, his groin. Too indiscriminate and too inconsistent to be a proper addict, but desperate enough for the next hit of anything he can get his hands on that he loses judgment. Before we fucked he was snorting lines between popping kakuseizai, not the brightest combination, his eyes sunken and somehow far too bright, fingers twitching uncontrollably. He was going in a bad direction, stumbling in through my door at all hours, knocked up on all kinds of drugs he couldn't even name. I'd locked him up for a few days more than once, forced detox until some fucker from Toue Inc, Takahashi or something mundane like that, a cow-eyed and soft slob in a suit too big for him, could show up to bring him home. It's more than I should be doing, dangerous territory, but I can't be bothered to stop. Not so different from him, I guess. I tell myself he’s a good gangster, that he does his job well and that’s why I go out of my way for him.

He laughs abruptly, trembling fingers lighting another cigarette. "I guess he'd be okay. I was like this before." He keeps laughing for too long.

He doesn't talk about where he was before he joined the Yakuza. An offhand comment here or there, at best, and the rumors that surrounded him and his unnatural eyes, his job at Toue Inc. His familiarity with drugs and medical knowledge. The flat, bored manner he had towards torture and death and human trafficking. The eerie naivete and confusion over social norms rarely seen outside of rural people from the far country, which he clearly was not. His sexual prowess and deranged interests. The way he shrugged when commenting on how he had to have check-ups every three months and sometimes the doctor made him blow him, and wasn't it weird how he still always did what he told him to, _still_? He'd laughed then too, the same way he is now, as if he knew he'd said too much. It isn't difficult to put it together, to know he'd come from the Institute, most of his childhood spent as a lab rat and I prefer not to think about what else. 

"If he's as young and stupid as you say, he won't notice." How old would he be now? Thirteen? Twelve? Six years apart, was all he'd said. I knew Virus' birthday, but not the other one's. Hadn't met him, haven't even seen him despite Virus appearing on my doorstep nearly every week for the last year. "When am I going to meet him anyway?"

Virus shrugs, drops the glass onto the bed and picks up the last unused condom on the pillow. Three a night for him, maximum. If he trashes them then fuck it, he's out in the cold. He raises an eyebrow at me. "Later," is all he says.

It's obvious enough what he wants, but I'm not in the mood.

"You can't see him now," he finally sighs when he realizes I’m not moving.

"Why not? You said he's on the island."

"Because even I can't see him."

"He in jail?"

He pauses. Something passes over his face, a flicker of an emotion I never thought I'd see on him, and then it's gone, as if it had never been.  "Something like that. Hey, let's go again."

"I'm forty-eight, fuck off." But I let him slide into my lap.

 

** YEAR TWENTY **

"Trip came home."

There are a thousand things I can say to this, but I let the statement hang between us a moment before responding. "What home is that?"

"Huh."

"I thought he was an orphan."

"He's living with me."

"So…” I pause and study his face, “you're his home."

Virus shifts his weight ever so slightly, his face blank, eyes dead and unreadable, but I've been with him long enough now to know that he's confused. He'd just assumed, just accepted it that he and Trip were meant to be together, but when forced to look at the situation, he loses track. I know before he speaks that the next words will be a change of topic.

"He's going to be hot."

"Oh?" I guess sex is easier for him to understand.

"He's already my height. Big shoulders. When we were little I used to think he might get fat, but he's all muscle." He hesitates. "And his face got nice. You can see what he'll look like in a few years in the contours."

He seems so satisfied, so content, and I remember how he used to be. It took him a long time to fill in, and even at twenty I can tell he still has some growing to do, not in height but in form. I can see it in his shoulders, his trim wrists and tiny waist, still a good seven or eight kilos heavier than he was when he showed up on my doorstep two years back, thin and ragged from wherever the hell he came from, but taking too many drugs to properly keep the weight on. "You looked at him a lot, eh."

If Virus finds that strange, he doesn't react. Only smiles then, "Yea. I took photos."

"Of course you did." I'm interested despite myself. Two years of hearing him babble about this asshole and never once have I see him.

But he already has his phone out, one of a dozen throwaways he cycles between on jobs, and is pulling them up.

He's better-looking than I expected. Virus isn't stupid, but he's not the brightest one I've met, and he sure as hell makes terrible decisions in his personal life and has remarkably bad taste at times. Bad enough that my wife once ordered him to leave and only come back when his outfit was coordinated because hell would freeze over before she let that kind of clash occur under her roof. Needless to say, I didn't have high hopes that this Trip would be remotely attractive. I don't know what I expected, but not _this_. I can see where Virus is going. He'll be handsome, when he grows into his face, that bulky, chiseled jaw and sweeping brow. Huge too, though Virus isn't exactly small, so that's no surprise. That's not what unnerves me.

"Why does he have the same eyes as you? You sure he's not your brother?"

He sidesteps the slight. "He likes to match, requested the same color, I guess."

I was taken aback. He doesn't wear contacts, unless... I understand then. Those years I learned not to talk about. Trip wasn't just a kid from his past. He was a fellow lab rat. "Same things happened to him, huh."

But if the memories unsettle him, the comfort of having Trip back in his life evens that out. The stiffness in his back when I used to ask before I knew better is gone, as if it never was. "Yea," he shrugs. "But he's home now."

 

** YEAR TWENTY-ONE **

"You think any more about letting him on?" He doesn't clarify. There's no need to.

"I've been asking around," I shrug, noncommittal, watching him over the rim of my coffee cup. It's true. I have, against my better judgment, and there's been talk of making room. Especially after Virus' show last month and the talk began of making him a _kuromaku_. After the way he killed three deserters who tried to make off with a suitcase of cash with three precise bullets, barrel to the roof of the mouth every time, too brutally businesslike for them to even resist. I'd been uneasy with the command to get rid of them. We all had been. Everyone but Virus. Who grinned and wiped his teeth with his index finger in that nasty way of his and marched forward and did what none of us were happy about doing, quick and easy, his face an empty grin like he was a cashier scanning groceries at a convenience mart. And he'd thrown himself at me that night with a fervor and a need I had never see in him before. I knew then, the true depths of his depravity, that he lived for that fear, that despair, that _look_ in someone's eye when they know it's over, when they surrender all hope and just fold up inside, dying before the trigger is pulled. _That_ was what made Virus tick, what he craved and needed the way other humans need food. Years after he wormed his way into my life, I think I started to love him a little that night.

He sips his drink loudly. A hot drink despite the warmth of the spring night, fuel to keep us going through this stakeout. I'm too old for this shit, but it's the job he got and he invited me and I found myself saying yes before I realized the gross overturning of protocol and hierarchy, and even when I realized, I didn't give a damn. Like I said, I've been warming to him. "Yea? I want to work with him. My job with Toue, the bodyguard shtick..." I know he's more than a bodyguard, know he's heavily involved in that gang for rich Platinum Jail brats Toue controls, but I have never pressed. Those aren’t the kind of people I want to dabble with and the less I know, the better. "He started there. I want him here, too."

"He a whore like you?" Maybe it's unfair to call him that, but while I might be his favorite, I'm not the only older man he schmoozes up to for money and favors. He jokes that I'm his vanilla lay, the only person who repeatedly wants the boring stuff, no bondage or costumes or anything kinky. I don't even want to know. Between his willingness to bend over and his willingness to kill, he's been settling in remarkably well. It isn't even strictly a Yakuza thing for him, as he once lamented to me that Toue kept brushing him off. No, you know what? Maybe it's not so unfair to call him that.

He shakes his head and grins. "Hates being touched by people. He'd kill someone before he let them fuck him. He's good for that kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?"

"Hurting people." He rocks back on his heels and sighs softly. "He never hit me though." He sounds fucking wistful and for the upteenth time since I met him, I wonder how much of a bleeding masochist he is. Can you be both a sadist and a masochist? I suddenly remember how he kept laughing when he first got tattooed, the bamboo needles ripping his back open in a dragon design while his gaze sparked and danced and he kept making bedroom eyes at me. I guess you _can_ be both.

"You want him to? You really are a freak."

"I'd hit him back. But it's odd, isn't it? He hits everyone, but never me. He says I calm him."

I don't know how this horny package of hopped up adrenaline and wired steel and whipcord, never shutting up and never stopping for more than half a second, can calm anyone down, and I wonder if Trip is as crazy as he is. Probably. But can he be as stupid? I'm not sure how that's possible. Calm him, my ass. "Sounds like the sad little fuck's got a crush."

"Oh, it's not like that," he shrugs, waves his hand dismissively.

"Really?"

"We just don't hate each other."

I'm not even going to try to argue that one, not when he's being this pointedly stupid. I don't get any denial from him so I can't even tease him. If our person of interest doesn't show up in the next five minutes I'm ditching this joint and letting this sadsack deal with the fact that he’s left waiting at the station for a missed train of civilized human emotions, himself.

 _Four minutes. Three._ I can't stop glancing at my watch. Our coffees are both gone now, crumpled cups thrown in the backseat of the car we're both now leaning against. Who in Midorijima leaves their windows open? I almost ask him, almost suggest we loot the car because I'm bored as hell and haven't done anything like that in decades and something about Virus sets the youth pulsing through my veins, and besides it _has_ to be an insurance scam so we’d be doing this slob a favor. _Two._

"He won't hit you if I tell him not to."

I snap my head up. I don't believe this. "I'm not worried about some punk."

"He always does what I say. It's strange. He's hard to understand sometimes."

 _One_. I close my eyes and exhale slowly. That pristine leer as he pulled the trigger three times. "You ever hotwire a car before?"

 

 ** YEAR TWENTY-TWO** 

"It's Trip."

"Why the hell is he ringing the doorbell?"

Virus freezes, shit-eating grin plastered across his face with his hand on the doorknob, unsure if he did something wrong and still young enough to consider pretending to care. "I taught him that's the polite thing to do?"

He shifts his weight when he realizes I'm not moving and tries again. "'Tell him to come to dinner.' That's what she said."

I can't imagine my wife saying that, but for all of Virus' failures, lying is not something he is prone to doing with me. I remember coveted glances, her fingers coiling through his necktie and pulling him from his kneel, a bow to the only woman _fuku-honbucho_ in Japan, before dragging him to her lair. I can't imagine her saying it, but I can imagine Virus boring her with stories about his room-mate fixation until she tells him to bring him here so she can decide if he's worthy of joining. Anything to shut him up. I also can't imagine that he _is_ worthy, not at sixteen, though Virus himself has proven to be a pleasant surprise. A killer with a brutally pure finesse who takes the initiative to wrap up loose ends without simply hoping for the best. "Fine. Let him in."

\--

Trip is at once nothing and everything as I imagined, so much more than the photos. He balances on the edge between the dull listlessness of any teenage boy and a razor-sharp feralness. That look on the faces of child soldiers in some country even more fucked up than ours, staring blankly at the camera as they mouth their ablutions on the evening news. The juxtaposition is as visible as a certain slant of light, caught only from the corner of your eye.

He's not all there. Virus isn't either. Something was knocked out of them, beaten or fucked or withdrawn from their blood in a syringe, in their shared childhood as Toue's subjects, or perhaps they were chosen, pulled from the streets and dumped onto hospital doorsteps and abandoned in public bathrooms, exactly _because_ of this lacking (the most I've ever been able to wrest from Virus is an affirmation that yes, they were lab rats, and sometimes it's better not to know the childhood of your favorite whore).

Eyes and hair the same color as Virus, and the same earrings, though the eyes are artificial and the hair is dyed, an act Virus assured me did not extend to his pubic hair, which I really didn’t need to know. That's where the similarities end. If he's mixed race like him, I can't tell. He has far to go in terms of growing, but he's already taller than him, which is impressive considering how big Virus is, more heavyset in that awkward, empty sort of way boys born to have muscle grow into their frame. Sixteen and he could probably snap Virus' neck with one hand. He is wearing a dress shirt and tie underneath the sweatshirt, I will give him that, and his pants are pressed and his boots are polished. But he barely talks and when he does he mumbles, avoids eye contact except to occasionally glare, hostile and unblinking, at my wife and I. A lot of slang. Kansai dialect. I wonder if Virus recognizes it, if he wonders where he's from. Probably not. He's at once overwhelming and underwhelming.

But Virus. Virus is electric. I've seen him hopped up on just about every drug out there, during sex, after sex, seconds after putting a bullet through someone's brain, but nothing like this. His eyes are bright, fixated on the boy next to him and dilated with excitement and something _more_. Spine rigid and back arched in attention, tilted towards him as if they were magnetic. He touches Trip every so often, darting his spider fingers out to prod his sweatshirt, his shoulder, his hair, even his hand once or twice. And he chatters on as fast as ever, but there is a gentleness in his voice I had never heard before, a subtle lilt whenever words are directed at or referring to Trip, even in the plural, moving from the self to the unit so fluidly I almost didn't notice.

Only an idiot wouldn't see what's going on. Though Virus is enough of one that he'd miss his own funeral.

Beyond his brazen cluelessness, dinner goes better than expected when there's a teenager at the table. Virus talks for Trip more often than not, carrying on enough for three people, constantly referring to themselves as a unit, and he more than makes up for Trip's silence. Moving from Toue Inc work to their life at home (which sounds disastrous) to Yakuza talk, another sleazy politician in Fukuoka yammering for some support that the Kudou-kai are turning a blind eye to, which my wife thinks is oddly hilarious.

And then Trip abruptly turns to me, raises an eyebrow to indicate he wants my attention, and blurts out, "Your wife's a milf, huh."

For a moment there is silence, Virus staring at Trip with that stupid I-don't-know-what-to-do grin on his face for that second time that night, and I take that moment to put my chopsticks down and lean away from the table before sparks fly. So much for dinner going well. 

 

** YEAR TWENTY-THREE   **

"Hey, if Trip and I ever end up in jail again, can we get these?" He rubs the two pearls on the underside of my dick as he asks.

I roll my eyes. Trip's not even initiated into the ranks yet, and Virus' fixation is absurd. He's been obsessed with those for some time, ever since I first sunk into him and he gave a surprised yelp when he first felt them, only to later laugh and say he'd never felt anything like it and who else on the island had them and was likely to fuck him if he whispered the right things in their ear? "Have to be behind bars for a whole year. You've managed, what, two weeks maximum?"

"Almost a year total. And there was that time."

"Bullshit. I got you out this time in two hours." It'd become a bit of a joke with the Midorijima police, when those blond fucks get arrested will it be the Yakuza or some poor buttoned up slob from Toue Inc. who scrambles first to get them out? But he does have a point. He'd spent nearly three months there in one bout some years ago when I was stuck on the mainland dealing with work. Never bothered to ask how rough a time he had in there. He's pretty and openly slutty but he's tall and he's vicious; he was probably left well enough alone. If he was anyone's cumbucket, it was voluntary, and besides he somehow walked out of there with a police uniform and his own set of real handcuffs for his depraved sex closet so he must have done something right.

He shrugs, does that disgusting grin where he rubs his teeth with the fingers he just had on my dick. "Yea well, maybe I'm more likely to get arrested with Trip."

"No you aren't." _You're better behaved when you're with him. Or maybe you're just growing up finally._ But I don't say either of those things, only grab his hand and place it over my crotch again. "Don't stop jerking someone off like that. It's rude."

 He manages to be quiet for all of thirty seconds as the heat coils in my stomach, until he abruptly says, "Trip's dick is thicker than mine or yours. I don't know how-"

"Virus."

"Mm?" he nuzzles my neck as I push him down and roll on top of him.

"I'm going to gag you if you don't shut up about Trip for one night. You two need to just fuck already."

"Oh it's not like that," he hums, wraps his arms around my neck and arches up into me.

"It's totally like that. One night. No Trip talk."

I can feel his grin against my neck, his teeth lightly grazing my skin. He manages to stay quiet for all of two minutes this time while I pull the lube out and shove two fingers into him, and then he's making noise as if he wants to speak, shuddering and propping himself up onto an elbow to gesture.  "Ah...wait."

"Mm?" Hands poised over his ass, thumbs pulling him open. It isn't a good time to ask someone who is paying to fuck you to wait, but I don't say it.

He swallows back whatever he wanted to say and clears his throat. "You're going to need that gag."

 

** YEAR TWENTY-FOUR **

I figured it was inevitable that I'd wind up being Trip's sponsor, too, what with how solidly Virus has situated himself in my life, but my wife stepped in for that, the last time he'd stopped in to pick up Virus with bloodied knuckles and she'd seen the width of his shoulders and the dimples he only shows in Virus' presence. Nobody would dare refuse him now, not after one fool snorted about letting another foreigner in and she'd shoved a gun barrel down his throat and calmly said that Shinnou was a foreign god, and if he was a true _tekiya_ then he'd watch his mouth. She took things more seriously than a lot of us, and on Midorijima, the Yakuza run like it's the last century. The funny thing about being as isolated as we are from the main families out here, we can re-enforce the old ways in such a way that we've gained a hell of a lot of respect in Honshu and Kyuushu.

Virus takes it as seriously as her, but I don't think any of it means a damn thing to Trip, Trip who calmly asked in that flat way of his if Virus could tattoo him instead of that soft dishrag with the bamboo needle because he didn't like anyone else touching him. Obviously not an option, and I'd told him as much,  that he'd get his tiger from someone who knew what he was doing after the party. And now here we are, about to begin the second sakazuki ceremony for a foreigner in six years.

"Make him stop slouching," I whisper in Virus' ear. "He's got the hostile look down but he's got to stop doing that. Looks bad."

"He's tall," Virus hisses, but he leans forward and discreetly shoves his thumbs into Trip's back, where his shoulders met his neck. It has the immediate desired effect, like he’s a trained dog, and I raise an eyebrow at him. Virus just shrugs, like it's something he does every day, and whispers, "He's cute in a kimono, huh."

"Shut up."

\--

He mentions it that night, after the ceremony and the food and the trip to the hot tub, when we're all lounging around drinking in a private bar pretending that we still want to party after seven hours of partying, curls a few fingers in my pocket and pulls me into another room to whisper in my ear.

"You _what_?"

"We got married."

It's too sudden, out of the blue, what with Virus not even being able to put his feelings together enough to know what Trip meant to him, but then again, Trip formerly joined the ranks now, so maybe Virus realized he was an adult.

"Why didn't you tell me you were planning it? I'd have gotten you something." Now I have to settle for a hastily written check as I pull out my wallet and a pen. _Sloppy_. Is it normal to give your preferred whores wedding gifts? Well, he's more than that, I figure, he's a work partner.

I don't bother asking if it's okay that he's still doing this. I'd been married over twenty years when we first met, a marriage of convenience more than anything, a response to a call put out by Midorijima's _fuku-honbucho_ at the time for someone in the mid- or upper- ranks to take his daughter's hand in marriage, someone who would let her do her own thing. I'd met her on a whim, figured that if I preferred men, a wife who didn't want me in her face might not be a bad idea. I didn't think we'd hit it off the way we did. Also didn't think she'd take her father's place when he died, instead of her older brother, but it made life a hell of a lot more interesting. I fold the check in half and lean over to tuck it in Virus’ pocket.

As expected, he grabs it out and opens it immediately, eyes shining as he chatters on. "It was really spur of the moment. Toue pulled some American-wannabe bullshit on us, you know how he is, and declared him an independent when he turned eighteen instead of twenty, so we lost the tax break. Just thought of it one day and signed papers the next. We can save on our taxes again, it's great."

I don’t know why I’m so fucking surprised, and I think the disbelief is showing in my face long before I can gather my bearing enough to ask. "Is that...why you got married?"

"Why else would we?"

He stands still and lets me prize the check from his greedy fingers, watches me with blank eyes as I sigh and tear it to pieces. "When you two get your shit together and go on a honeymoon, we'll try this again."

** YEAR TWENTY-FIVE **

Virus has grown up in recent years, cut back on the drugs, the parties, the wild, out-of-control behavior of his early years with us, as if he'd been in a cage his whole life and was suddenly open to a vast array of sensual experiences he had never dreamed possible before that moment. I know it's not far from the truth, for him. He still does more drugs than he should, and I think he always will - he's too into the culture, like that strung-out American journalist who asked for his remains to be blasted into space some decades ago, but he's settling into a routine that's at least safer than before. Still sells his ass left and right, but like with the drugs, he's more careful now. He can afford to be selective, with his reputation. Finally fully grown, on a regular enough diet to have filled in and working out, he's somehow more attractive now than ever. Might be one of the lucky ones, who can turn heads at fifty if he survives that long. I know part of it is his age and part of it is Trip. He has someone to take care of now, and someone to take care of him. I've seen the way they look at each other, the way they touch, the way Virus cleans up and practically runs home instead of crashing on my sofa Thursday nights like he used to.

And now that asshole who I've watched grow the last seven years is bleeding out on my living room floor. He didn't even make it to the sofa.

Trip had carried him in only minutes ago. There'd been an earthquake off the coast of the island last night, thirty-seven dead or missing and another several hundred injured, the worst natural disaster Midorijima had faced this century. It was supposed to be a no-bullshit job, send a dozen of the more respectable-looking men out to help, keep the pressure _on_ the police to keep the pressure _off_ us by showing what great and upstanding citizens we were, rushing to help bring supplies to the disaster site. We hadn't expected there to be some hardcore left-wing shitstain there with a gun, ready to shoot anybody who looked official enough to be government, because apparently the prime minister was the one who planned the earthquake to keep the downtrodden that way. Ironic how the one person he managed to shoot before Trip blew his brains out was probably one of the lowest-class citizens on the island and one of the few people who really looked down on everyone under the dome.

Virus is conscious, if just, pale and covered in cold sweat, hand clamped over his thigh. It had missed his groin by mere centimeters, but even I could see it had hit an artery, the blood pumping through his fingers a bright red. One of those exploding bullets too, from the look of the wound and the shrapnel in his hip and torso. How the fuck a civilian got a hold of one of those weapons is beyond me. This wasn't Virus' first bullet, but the first one had been clean, right through his upper arm four years ago, no arteries and a neat exit wound.

"Why'd you come here?" I finally manage to ask, running a hand through Virus' hair. He's cold and his eyes are unfocused. I can't tell if he even knows I'm there, which doesn't seem good. I don't know how much blood he lost at the site.

Trip doesn't even answer, only nods at my wife.

"We have to call her," she says calmly, leaning against the doorframe and eyeing the blood on the carpet. It clearly annoys her more than the fact that he’s probably dying.

"No." It comes out faster than I intend, more panicked. This is not a decision I want to have to make. _Her_. The daughter I had made sure to keep Virus from ever meeting, the daughter who went off to the mainland for medical school and came back to be an off-the-record emergency doctor for prostitutes and homeless people and the occasional mobster. The thought of Virus, much less _Trip_ , meeting her made something vile twist in my throat. "There are other people."

"Her or a hospital or he dies. The other underground surgeons are at the disaster site. She told me this morning she had to stay behind because of it," my wife shrugs as she speaks, as if it's not a matter of life or death.

"But they're..." I trail off. I hate Trip a little in that moment, for coming here instead of trying to find a doctor over there, though realistically it was the wisest decision.

She raises an eyebrow. "You think she can't handle them? She chose this job."

The only two times I'd ever turned Virus away were when one of my kids was home. I loved him, but I didn't trust him. Not with the way he'd found a photo of my son and laughed, said he might trade me in for the younger model before I’d pulled a gun on him and ordered him to drop it, only half playing. He knew about them, knew my son was on the mainland with a wife of his own and knew my daughter was here as a doctor, but I had made him swear never to call on her. Apparently someone had told Trip at some point, someone who may have been Virus and may have been my wife, who I’m fairly certain knows Trip on an intimate level at this point, and the decision was somehow made for me. I glance at Virus, whose eyes are closed now, who looks even worse than he did thirty seconds ago. "Call her," I finally sigh, and duck into the kitchen for the heaviest alcohol we have.

It's not for Virus.

She's there within ten minutes, shooting him up with painkillers (I hear Trip growl something about no morphine, that he doesn’t like it) and slapping him across the face to keep him awake, which I'm pretty sure isn't necessary but she's never missed the chance to slap a Yakuza. She looks at the wound, mutters an oath, and says something about having to ligate the artery and getting more blood into him before dealing with the shrapnel. I step back when she opens the cooler and pulls out the blood bags, when Trip says that Virus can take his blood if he needs more. I'm not squeamish, but seeing Virus get cut open even more is more than I'm interested in.

I don't know why I was worried about them. Virus is scarcely conscious, and Trip's entire world seems to be focused on him. I think the prime minister himself could have operated on him and they wouldn't have noticed, despite her calmly talking them through everything she's doing. Trip holds him through the entire thing, propped up against his chest with an arm around his back and his other hand rubbing his arm, grabbing his hand and giving Virus something to cling to as the pile of bullet fragments in the dish grows. Virus becomes more aware of things by the time she's moved to digging for the pieces, and I catch then linking fingers more than once, see the way Trip murmurs things I'm not close enough to hear in Virus' ear the entire time, the way his lips graze his skin in what could be a kiss when a particularly deep probe makes Virus cry out.

When it's over and she's stitched and bandaged him up, dropped the empty bags and used needles into a biohazard container, and shoved a bag full of antibiotics and fentanyl candies into Trip's hands, she leaves with a roll of her eyes in my general direction, a silent admonishment because it's all too obvious what he is to me, and the suggestion that he stay here for the night.

He hasn't slept on the couch in years, and seeing him curled up there again makes me uneasy somehow. He hasn't been this vulnerable in a long time. Trip's draped over the back of the couch, lazily stroking his hair and staring at him in a way that indicates he can see how vulnerable Virus is right now as well. 

"Trip."

"Huh." He cocks his head towards me, hostility clear in his eyes.

"Don't try to fuck him when he's like that. You'll rip him open again."

I half expect him to act like Virus, to look confused, to stare blankly, to say that things aren't like that. But he does none of that. Instead he shrugs. "Too bad."

 

** YEAR TWENTY-SIX **

"I'm not into it," he finally sighs, rolls to the side and takes his glasses off to wipe his face. "Too stressed."

It isn't surprising or troubling. For years and years, he needed drugs or enough alcohol to be plastered to be able to have sex. Supposedly the same with everyone he sleeps with. Never wanted to ask why. I figured it was because he was drugged as a kid before the doctors had fun with him and that wasn't a conversation I was interested in having. He's been working down from that lately, which I have to respect him for, but sometimes he needs a push. He still has a raging sex drive, was all over me just ten minutes ago.

I guess that’s what makes me ask. "Want to talk about Trip?"

He perks up at that, corner of his mouth turning up a bit. "What about him?"

I ask the first thing that comes to mind when he starts in on about his stupid roommate. "How do you want him?"

He doesn't even have time to say it isn't like that. He just blurts out, "Inside me."

Fucking hell, Virus. It took you far too many years to say it. But the last thing I want to do is shut him up by bringing attention to that. "Mmm, thought so. Come on. Details. How would he fuck you?"

He pushes me aside as he rolls onto his back and sighs happily. I let him do it, let him hook his legs around my waist and pull me back over him. "Hard, probably. He does everything so roughly, can't imagine he's any different in bed. I want him to wreck me." He looks content, dazed almost, as if he's already deep in the fantasy after just a few words.

"Foreplay? He has to suck your dick a little first, finger you, hm?" I trace my fingers up his organ. He's remarkably responsive now, when thirty seconds ago he was dead in the water.

He's doing that thing with his shoulder blades as he speaks, arching up as he pushes them together and wriggles against the mattress. I used to think it was weird. Now it's just cute, one of his four hundred disgusting charm points. "I guess. Dunno if he'd suck me off the first time. I've heard rumors about him, talked to him about how he fucks people before. He doesn't usually go with men, has a lot of girlfriends, but he's usually really fast and bored, just gets it off and is done with it."

"He wouldn't be like that with you." I don't comment on the girl thing. The way he looks at Virus is proof enough that he wants him, his comment in my living room last year enough of an indicator that he’s only waiting for Virus for some inexplicable reason at this point, though I’ve heard enough rumors about him to know that impulse-control is not normal behavior for him. Anyway it's not as if Virus hasn't gotten straight men in bed before. I slide a finger down his perineum and into his ass. He'd used a lube ball earlier, and I'm rewarded with a sigh of satisfaction. "He'd spend a long time with you, all night, make you come four times until you're orgasming dry."

He gyrates his hips now, pushing down on my fingers. "That's too much," but he's grinning as he says it, face flushed. Don't think he's ever acted like this when sober before. "I want him to kiss me, really deep and intense kisses. Run those hands all over me as he's inside, leave bruises on my hips and ass. I'd even let him play with my nipples."

"Bullshit," I press a third finger in and his dick jumps, already leaking. So much for being too stressed. His tits are his off-limits area, so sensitive he once told me he thinks he can come from those alone, though he's never tried because it makes him crazy. Slaps people away if they try. But his comment makes me curious, and as I start talking again I slide my hand up his torso. "He'd bite and twist them until you cry out, pull out real slow and drag you over his dick so you feel every centimeter of it, right until he's almost out, and slam into you really hard, roll his hips in a slow grind while he's up in there."

He doesn't push me away this time, instead presses his hand over mine, stiffens and gasps as my thumbnail scrapes his right nipple. I should have done this a long time ago. He's so fucking gone it takes him nearly half a minute to reply. "Think he bites? I want him to bite me when I come the first time. Then throw me onto my stomach and take me from behind so he can get even deeeep-er...." he breaks off to moan as I position myself and push into him, but he manages to continue. "Whisper dirty shit in my ear. I bet he'd try to get me scared but! Ah he'd just be cute."

I wonder how often he jerks off to Trip, how many times a week he has this exact fantasy, because he's somewhere else right now. I keep him going, keep muttering nonsense about Trip to him, asking him questions, goading him on, and he orgasms within seven minutes.

I don't bother telling him he moaned Trip's name when he came. From the pale, startled look on his face after the fact and the way he slaps his hand over his mouth, I think he knows.

 

 ** YEAR TWENTY-SEVEN ** 

It's a good six months after Virus first said his name during sex that I start feeling bitter about it for the first time. It's a negligible feeling, really, but different enough from the norm to unsettle me. I know everyone with a long time whore runs into it eventually, that creeping sense of unease when it hits you that you pay them to stick around and there are other people in their life who don't do that, but I know it's bullshit because he's just as much a work partner as he is anything else, and for the last three or four years he even refuses money from time to time. I don't want him for myself, hell no, I'd be happy if Trip took him off my hands, some nights, and I don't worry that he'll vanish, but there's still that ugly discomfort and I'd do anything to kill it.

I'm mulling over this when I run into him out on a date with Trip on the night I decide to treat myself. He'd said the night before that they were just grabbing a bite to eat, to talk over some food about work. I didn't expect to see them there, the second-most-expensive restaurant on the island, most expensive foreign one, dressed to the nines and playing footsie under the table to a candlelit dinner and two bottles of wine. It used to amaze me what Virus could knock back, but now I only expect it. I don't think they even notice me at the bar, because they don't take their eyes from one another for more than half a second the entire night.

I've seen Trip plenty of times since that first disastrous dinner several years ago, watches him grow into the man he is now. Immense, not much taller than Virus but bulkier, muscular. He continued to surprise me with how attractive he ended up, and I used to think that was just years and years of Virus baffled over how cute he is rubbing off on me. Seeing him now though, in a full suit and what looks like a frock coat (dude was always a little edgy, which I used to tease Virus about, but I get it now) hair slicked back and half a dozen rings on his fingers, I can tell it's not just Virus' influence. They both look good, and they look even better together.

They're a deadly pair. _Kuromaku_. The clean-up crew. Interrogations. Getting people straight. Making the crooked ones disappear. All of it neat and orderly, behind the curtain. They don't look like thugs, not really, well-dressed and reasonably well-mannered, both with at least three languages under their belts. Though we do give Trip plenty of chances to go beat the shit out of people outside the official work. It's better to keep him content, give him outlets for that seething violence. Virus was right. Hurting people is what he's good at, so he hasn't properly climbed the ranks nearly as much as Virus and he's unlikely to. We've managed to work with them though, let them do their shit together because they're a perfect team.

Trip's grinning in that way he only does around Virus, lopsided with his lips jutting out as he talks too low for me to hear, eyes half-closed and one dimple showing. It's clear as day that he wants him, that half the time when he looks at Virus he's just thinking about fucking him and the other half the time he's thinking about being with him in other ways. I've never seen anyone so brazenly devoted to another human, and it crosses my mind that night that Trip knows more about what's between them than Virus does, but he simply lacks the words to say it.

Virus is no better though, the way he leans over the table and can't even blink, he's staring at him so intently, one hand pressed beneath his chin in such a way he can still rub his teeth with his pinkie as he grins and murmurs, the other hand alternating between his wine glass and the space between them. He grabs Trip's hand more than once over the course of the night, and I see that electricity between them again, the same I saw so many years ago.

I don't feel bad watching them all night, and by the end of it, any unease I'd felt had long since dissipated. I know enough about Virus to know he doesn't deserve happiness, any more than any of us in the business do, but he at least deserves someone who gets him, who knows who and what he is and who doesn't care, who is just as depraved as he is, who is hopelessly devoted to him and who he is just as devoted to, though he's too stupid to realize it. I let another cigar burn to nothing as I watch them kick each other under the table, and for the first time in my life I believe in soulmates.

 

** YEAR TWENTY-EIGHT **

I don't know what makes me say it so bluntly, ten years after I first heard that name. Maybe that's all it is. Ten years seems a sufficiently, embarrassingly long time to be in love with someone without being able to put it together. "You're in love with him."

"I don't love him. I love Aoba," he says it easily, pleasantly. There is no denial in his voice, no nervousness, no unease at feeling something he doesn't want to. Denial, I can understand, This though... there are no words for this level of depraved and inhuman stupidity.

"What do you want to do to Aoba?" I've heard the name a handful of times over the years, but never enough for me to think there was anything like love there. Just some stupid kid who plays Rhyme or whatever shit they're into these days. I'll humor him though.

"Lock him in a box."

Something about the way he says it, the way his eyes gleam and his fingers twitch, indicate that he isn't being figurative. There's no need to dig though; I've seen what he is capable of. "And Trip?"

"Uhm. That's harder," he exhales sharply.

"Why?"

"He likes having his head scratched. Like a dog," he suddenly blurts out, craning his neck to look up at me as he darts his hand out and touches my scalp. "Sometimes he even makes a humming noise when I do it. He's weird."

Like so much of what Virus says that seems disconnected and abrupt, it is hardly random. It's enough of an answer, though he himself doesn't realize it, doesn't realize the momentousness behind his mind wandering to Trip's happiness when asked what he wants to do to him.

"And that's what you want to do to him?" I say slowly.

"I like that sound he makes when he's calm," he continues, the look on his face distant and content. "Sometimes we just get in bed together and I scratch his head and talk in his ear until he falls asleep."

That's news to me, though I can tell by the way he speaks that they've been doing it for years. I guess it isn't so surprising. They are alarmingly intimate, constantly touching, though there’s a distance between them nonetheless. _The waiting._ "What do you say to him?"

"I dunno, all kinds of shit. Bitching about work. Telling him a story I read. Dirty talk or sex stuff. I don't think he notices so sometimes I just make funny noises."

I find it hard to believe that Trip doesn't notice when Virus is muttering about sex in his ear while they're in bed together, but they're so fucking weird I wouldn't put it past him. "You ever tell him how you feel for him?"

He hesitates a moment before diverting to something easier for him to understand. "Do you think he'd fuck me if I whispered it in his ear one night?"

"Are you kidding?"

"No. I don’t know what he’d do." It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard him say.

"Go home and talk to him."

He laughs, sinks down under the covers. "Don't be ridiculous."

 

** YEAR TWENTY-NINE **

"I want to bang him, I think."

"I'm well-aware," I roll my eyes as he quickly snorts a line off my nightstand, sits upright and holds his nose closed for a moment before continuing.

"I mean I want to fuck him. He can top the first few times we have sex, but I want to get inside him sometime."

Apparently his fantasies have evolved since we last talked about this. He's already established a rather advanced storyline here. I can't see that working out, as much as Trip is clearly into him. I lean forward and run a licked finger over the nightstand to grab up whatever he missed. He's a slob with coke. Always has been. "You think he'd let you do that? Have much experience topping?"

He shrugs, and I realize too late I asked two questions at once. I'll never know now. He's not good at lying, surprisingly enough. He's just good at dodging questions about Trip. And then he leans back on the bed and sighs softly, gives me that heavy-lidded look like he's ready for sex.

 I guess it's that look that makes me say it, suggest what I'd never asked in all of our eleven years together. "You want to try topping tonight? I can show you what to do. For Trip." Who, I don't add, will likely need a hell of a lot of persuasion. I've seen him break the jaws of men who accidentally bumped him in the hall.

Virus replies too quickly for me to have time to take it back and his dilated eyes snap wide open with an emphatic, " _Yes_."

I've bottomed a handful of times in my life, and I'd enjoyed it well enough, but it's not the kind of thing someone in my position can ask for. I sure as hell wouldn't let Virus be my first, if I'd been a virgin about it, especially when he's hopped up on coke and fantasizing about Trip like he is now. Even as he scrambles for the condoms and lube, I wonder absently if I should retract the offer, but he's eager and I like seeing him happy because I'm a fool for him. I was always a fool for him, his pale thick lashes and his stupid eyebrows that he overplucked and his seven gold fillings and his perfect nose.

"Calm down, eh. If you're too excited, you'll get sloppy."

He nods and laughs. "Yea, sorry." But he isn't sorry. He's excited about this. "What position?"

"Take me from behind. It'll be easier for you." I pull him in for a kiss and let him run his hands down my torso.

"You know I'm big."

And inexperienced, so it won't matter much, but I don't add that. "It's fine," I say, and I let him push me down, shove a pillow under my hips.

I made two mistakes that night. My first was letting him top at all, but my second was turning my back on him like that. I never got the warning, never saw that filthy look of triumph on his face that I'm sure was there. Because he's better and he's rougher than I could ever have imagined. He knows exactly where to hit, when to slow down and grind and when to move hard and fast, where to play his fingers and when to duck his head down to bite my neck, shoulders, whatever he can sink his teeth into, and he isn't gentle. The whole time he jerks me off, nails scraping over my head just enough to be painfully arousing.

I yell at one point, and he laughs and squeezes the base of my dick like a vice and presses his other hand over my mouth and mutters in my ear that my wife's home, that not even _she_ screamed like that when he took her, that she'll surely laugh at me if she heard, but though his voice is low and husky I can tell he's only playing. He knows better than to threaten me even when he's splitting me in half. I don't last much past that, and in less than ten minutes of him sliding into me the world explodes into whiteness while he laughs and hums in my ear and continues to viciously ride me through it until he's coming inside of me and roughly shoving me away.

The first thing I can say is, "Get me a drink."

He's too startled to refuse, and within thirty seconds of fumbling in his suit jacket on the floor he tosses a nip to me. He usually carries a few with him.

"Fuck, I didn't tell you to wreck me," I finally gasp. "You've done that before and you went on my sixty-year-old ass like the filthy little liar you are."

"I never said that. It wasn't my first time, you know. Probably a third of you guys ask me to top. They like that I’m tall and blonde. _Exotic_."

I almost spit my drink out. "What? Wait. Who?"

"No way. I get paid extra to pretend they fucked me instead. I already have the cumbucket reputation so it makes no difference to me," he shrugs.

"Does Trip know?"

"He watches sometimes."

I _do_ spit my drink out at that one. "He watches," I repeat, disbelieving. These two get weirder every day.

"Yea. Only a couple of guys are okay with him watching when I top but most are fine with him around when I bottom." He apparently missed what I thought was so fucking weird about this, which is that Trip watches him have sex with people, _not_ that clients don’t mind the voyeurism. "We watch each other fuck a lot. Not all the time but-"

"Does he ever say anything?"

"Not about the sex. We just chat. Sometimes we touch each other."

"Virus..." I exhale slowly. My ass hurts and my head hurts and I don't know what's worse, the pain from the sex or the pain from his obliviousness.

"He does that, too, when I watch him fuck people. Says my name."

I throw the bottle at him.

 

** YEAR THIRTY **

 "Trip saw you last night, with your wife, walking down by the park. We were at the ichiya restaurant at the corner there."

That restaurant is nine flights up. Trip's eyesight has always creeped me out, but it's proven useful many a time, especially when we send him off to work the tables in the gambling dens, something he has an unexpected knack for. He can also rig slot machines, another exceptionally useful skill of his that I pretend to know nothing about. He thinks it’s funny, sticking it to the rich scum in Platinum Jail by rigging all the pachinko in there and dropping bags of cash on my wife’s desk. He and Virus have been veritable gold mines for the family. "Yea? You go out to dinner with him again?"

"Mm-hmm," he hums, rolling the cigarette in his fingers and shifting his weight. I can tell he's uncomfortable, that his ass is sore, because he's moving in the same way he moves after a particularly rough night somewhere. "The chef there makes him special sizes of everything, so he can get like twelve things at once and try it all."

"Isn't that embarrassing?"

He gently deflects my hand creeping up his thigh. "Naw. It's kind of cute."

It hits me then. The soft and dreamy look on Virus' face, unfocused and content in a way that I've never seen him before except by small degrees, when he talks about Trip. The way he delicately holds his body and gently brushes off my advances just as he has been all evening, indicating not that he doesn't want it, but that he can't deal with it. I can't believe it, and even less can I believe my sense of anticipation when I ask. "You and Trip had sex last night, didn't you?"

"Yea," he says it softly, not bothering to hide the smile, the way his gaze lowers. He doesn't ask how I knew. Maybe it doesn't occur to him to wonder.

There's too much going on for me to respond immediately, relief that they got there, excitement for them, apprehension over what will become of them now, everything that they probably aren't feeling, I'm carrying for them. I could say a lot to that, could say it was about time, finally, what took them so long, but it doesn't matter now. They figured it out, found each other after so many years of living on top of one another. "And...?"

"Five orgasms. Made me come dry twice." Of course he'd start with that. "I thought I was going to die, didn't know sex could be so good it makes me cry."

"You know it feels better when you like the person, right." I don't even let it be a question.

"Hm. Maybe. I didn't even take anything," he still has that stupid grin on his face, but I can tell he's seriously thinking about it. It's the closest he's ever come to realizing what he feels for Trip, as far as I can tell. But he's made it this far. He sinks down into the bed beside me and sighs. "We fucked all night. Faced each other the first time, then he took me from behind. Pulled me into a sitting position until I came a third time and then did me face to face again for a while. We made out on the shower floor all morning, too tired to go at it again but I couldn't let go of him."

He keeps going and I let him talk, let him work it out for himself, until he abruptly blurts out, "Wanna do a threesome sometime? I think he'd be okay with it."

"No fucking way. He's got to be at least ninety kilograms." I don't add that I'm still uncertain as to how much he likes me. He's impossible to read and I wouldn't put it past him to use that as a chance to murder me because I’m not Virus and I don’t think anyone else even makes it on the radar for him as real people worth keeping alive.

"Ninety-four point seven."

"No. No no no."

"Yea. I want to fuck his tits sometime, and his thighs. He has such _hard_ thighs. I love his muscles. Remember when I used to worry that he'd end up fat? He can break me in half. I hope he does tomorrow. I'm still too fucked up now but if he asks when I go home..." He rolls over and presses his face into the pillow and laughs. He sounds drunk but I know he isn't, just content and happy for reasons other than sadism for the first time in his life and unsure of how to handle it. I take the opportunity to reach for my wallet and quickly begin writing.

He smells money and jumps up eagerly. "Hey, is that the-"

"Honeymoon check," I cut him off. "Go. I'll cover for you guys for a month. This should be enough to blast through the mainland and bang in every big city. You two were so fucking dumb you missed out on years of sex. Make up for it. Break his pelvis and buy him a ring."

"A cock ring? I think he'd whine. I'm not sure if-"

"A wedding ring, you dumbass. It's six years overdue."

"Oh." His surprise is as genuine as his grin.

I never thought I'd be so pleased to see someone that happy.

 

** EPILOGUE **

I know it’s him when the phone rings because nobody else is bull-headed enough to call that line at three in the morning on a Thursday.

He doesn’t even let me say anything before spilling. “No broken pelvises yet but we’re working on it.”

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Mmm,” he laughs abruptly and I can hear a low voice mutter something. Trip, probably touching him, making him squirm. “We’re having fun.”

“Yea? How you liking the mainland? See anything neat?” I rub my eyes and try to wake up. He sounds far too awake for this time, probably just fucked, but the happiness bleeds through his words and I’m grateful for that.

“We saw Takahashi-san in Kyoto. Visiting his parents. He was wearing sweatpants,” he says it like it’s the eighth wonder of the world. I try to think on where I heard that name before, and then it hits me. _That cow-eyed boy who works with them at their other job, the one with the obvious crush._

“Let him be. I’m sure you have sweatpants.”

“No, that’s Trip when he sneaks off to the conbini for more beer at five in the morning. When he can walk anyway.”

“You fucked him yet?”

A sharp intake of breath that’s undeniably sexual and I imagine Trip touching him. I want to see them get it on, I realize suddenly. He makes another sound before responding, “We got kicked out of that hotel because he was so loud. He even got teary-eyed. ”

“Hell.” There’s nothing else I can even say to that. These two never cease to amaze me. Maybe I’ll reconsider that threesome offer when they get home.

“We found out fucking in the hot tub works when we’re too sore to do it in bed so now we only go to places with big private baths. Better anyway, with our tattoos, but we really need the heat, all that friction all the time…” His breath hitches and I can hear Trip’s laughter in the background now, probably fingering him while he’s on the phone or something disgusting like that. I can hear him mutter something like “ _ask him, ask him_ ” and I don’t even want to know.

“You okay with money?” I change the subject. It seems safest.

“Mm hmm. We bought you a bunch of _omiyage_.” He pauses. “Hey, is it possible to mutually eat ass in a sixty-nine position? We keep trying but…”

“Virus.” I close my eyes and sigh. I can feel his grin through the phone, pristine and vicious and amused, not so different from the one he had when he pulled that trigger three times in a warehouse. I remember what he looked like on my doorstep that other day almost thirteen years ago now. I remember figuring he’d be dead before he hit twenty, thinking he’d never know happiness, worrying about him despite myself. And I remember seeing him with Trip for the first time, the way his face lit up and his voice changed, and all the times thereafter, all the touches and whispers and looks between them. I don’t know if it’s pride or just relief, but there’s something there that I’ll be damned before I let him catch a glimpse of.

“Yea?”

“I’m hanging up now. Good night.”

 

\- fin -


End file.
